‘WikiLeaks Did Not Disclose “Gays” To The Saudi Govt’: Whistleblower Site Fires Back Against Media Attacks

A figure depicts Julian Assange on a cross on top of a supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a vigil outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. (AP /Sang Tan)

AUSTIN, Texas — WikiLeaks has filed a formal complaint accusing The Associated Press of violating journalistic ethics in a recent report that claimed the transparency site was responsible for “outing” private data belonging to Saudi citizens.

The Aug. 23 investigation by AP reporters Raphael Satter and Maggie Michael accused WikiLeaks of releasing the private data of “scores” of residents of the Gulf kingdom as part of the The Saudi Cables. This collection, which the site launched in June 2015, consists of over 122,000 files leaked from Saudi foreign affairs ministry.

In the report, Satter and Michael lodge serious accusations, including that WikiLeaks published private medical data relating to “sick children, rape victims and mental health patients.”

While the AP report takes pains to protect the identities of everyone ostensibly involved in the leak of private data in the interest of their safety, these precautions also make it far more difficult to independently verify the report.

In another tweet, WikiLeaks predicted other “recycled” attacks would be forthcoming from the media.

US big media scramble to side with presumptive winner #Clinton. We expect many more recycled attacks like AP's today as our leaks continue.

In a July 25 report from The Huffington Post, Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science, wrote:

“[T]his ‘leak’ actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers.”

She added:

“If these women are members of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP), the dumped files also contain their Turkish citizenship ID, which increases the risk to them as the ID is used in practicing a range of basic rights and accessing services. The Istanbul file alone contains more than a million women’s private information, and there are 79 files, with most including information of many hundreds of thousands of women.”

WikiLeaks reportedly blocked Tufekci on Twitter after a somewhat heated exchange about the issue in late July.

On Aug. 23, WikiLeaks used Twitter to refute Tufekci’s claims about the Erdogan emails, quoting from another tweet by national security analyst Michael Best, who took responsibility for the leak of private data.

According to a July 27 post by Best on his website, Glomar Disclosure, the leak originated with Phineas Fisher, the pseudonym of a hacker responsible for other high-profile leaks. While WikiLeaks published only a partial archive of the Erdogan emails, Best wrote that the organization also tweeted a link to the full leak file, which contained the private data, that Best had mistakenly published. He wrote:

“Even though my name was on the page as the uploader and I had tweeted it out first, WikiLeaks never tried to pass the buck to me or say that it was my upload or my fault. … I can only conclude that this is because doing so would have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of their source protection policy by placing the blame on me or pointing the Turkish government in my direction. For that, I’m grateful.”

Best deleted the data after he became aware of its contents, and WikiLeaks’ original tweet no longer links to a valid file. In another tweet, Best admitted that other copies may exist on the internet, though he’s made efforts to get them deleted as well.

Tufekci, for her part, continues to accuse WikiLeaks of irresponsible behavior. In a July 27 update to her Huffington Post report, she added:

“WikiLeaks’ defense of the doxing databases appears to boil down to ‘we didn’t upload them.’ But it’s no defense to say that one has merely linked to and publicized information that poses a direct and grave threat to millions, especially for people and groups with the power of publicity and millions of followers.”

During the fallout from the DNC Leak, the Hillary Clinton campaign accused WikiLeaks of working with Russia to leak the private files. These accusations were mostly based on circumstantial evidence provided by security experts with known ties to the NSA, as MintPress News founder and editor-in-chief Mnar Muhawesh noted on July 25.

“Ultimately, there’s no conclusive proof that the hackers in either instance were Russian or even tied to the Russian government,” Muhawesh wrote.

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